The Society of California Pioneers, which I visited last week, has a great exhibit dedicated to the San Francisco Seals' goodwill trip to Japan in 1949. In the exhibit it has prints of Japanese baseball cards.

There are no labels on the cards, but I am fairly certain the first is Lefty O'Doul, the immensely popular San Francisco Seals manager. The second sure looks a heck of a lot like Joe DiMaggio, who had played for the Seals almost two decades earlier, but was already a star with the New York Yankees by the time the Seals went to Japan. I don't know who the third player is, and the fourth picture is a photo of the entire display.

From my recent trip to the Society of California Pioneers...

Shop for:

Comments

fkw, 6 years agoVery nice display and those cards are in unusually nice condition for bromides. The first one is O'Doul, the second one is a SF player named Dino Restelli, not sure on the third one, dont have it and I cant read Japanese.

Steve E., 6 years agoThe third player is "Strick" Shofner (his name is shown in katakana at the top of the card) and his position is 3rd base (which are the characters directly above his head).